Note to Gun-Control Liberals: You Can’t Handle the Truth

As they typically do following high-profile shooting incidents, liberals are taking advantage of the Sandy Hook tragedy and the Jovan Belcher/Kasandra Perkins murder-suicide to turn up the volume in the debate over one of their favorite issues: gun control. To liberals, the solution to every problem is the same: pass another law and increase the size of government. But liberal solutions do not work and never will work because they ignore some obvious truths. For example, here is a truth that liberals admit but like to ignore: The government spends billions on its so-called “war on drugs,” but to no avail. Drug use is higher than it has ever been. Immigration laws do little to deter illegal immigration. They just create jobs for criminals who specialize in circumventing the laws. Prohibition did not stop the sale and consumption of alcohol. It just created a black market for liquor, a market that flourished. New gun-control laws will be equally ineffective, and liberals know it.

Why are liberals so determined to avoid dealing with the hard truths about gun violence in America? It’s because they can’t handle the truth. The first and most important truth that must be faced about gun-violence in America is that liberals who are so vocal about passing gun-control laws are hypocrites—they are not interested in reducing gun violence in the first place. They are simply pandering to naïve Americans and those poor grieving families of shooting victims to make it appear that they care and are doing something.

Commenting on the gun-control debate, my business partner and friend, Sean Aland, likes to say: “In America, we have a heart problem, not a gun problem.” Another way to say the same thing is this: Push God aside and you will have Godlessness. Consequently, for liberal pundits and politicians to wring their hands and wonder aloud what is happening to America is nothing but theater. What is happening to America is that we are reaping the harvest of what liberals have been sowing for more than 40 years, a truth liberals can’t handle.

Another truth liberals can’t handle is that moral relativism is at the heart of America’s moral demise and, in turn, gun violence. Liberals have sold America on the lie that there are no absolutes, that right and wrong are relative concepts. According to liberals, what is right for you may not be right for someone else. Here is the hard truth about moral relativism that liberals do not want to discuss: If liberals are correct that there are no absolutes and we can all determine what is right, why should anyone be surprised when a young man chooses to act out his hostility toward the world using an automatic weapon. Moral relativism is the cause of the breakdown in American society that led to Sandy Hook and other incidents of gun violence. This is the truth, but liberals can’t handle the truth.

Protecting Roe v. Wade is the holy grail of liberalism. Consequently, while they weep—as they should—for the innocent children who were brutally murdered at Sandy Hook, liberals shed not a tear for the thousands who are murdered in the womb every year under the guise of “choice.” The only difference between the children who were slaughtered at Sandy Hook and those slaughtered in abortion clinics every year is their age. A society cannot choose to kill unborn babies for the sake of convenience and expect that this heinous practice will not coarsen the attitudes of people toward human life. This is the truth, but liberals can’t handle the truth.

Gun-control liberals support Hollywood, and Hollywood supports liberals. Yet every year Hollywood turns out another crop of disgusting movies that portray gratuitous violence, rape, and hedonism as not just normal but heroic. This is also true of computer games—Adam Lanza’s favorite pastime—and television, yet the filth and violence in movies, computer games, and television comports perfectly with the moral relativism of liberals. Liberals in Hollywood regularly turn out some of the most violent movies imaginable while hypocritically decrying the violence we observe daily in America. Even a fool would know that young people cannot grow up on a steady diet of gratuitous violence and not be affected by it. This is the truth, but liberals can’t handle the truth. One final truth liberals can’t handle is this: it’s not what’s in a man’s hand that makes him a killer it’s what’s in his heart—or better yet, what’s not in his heart.

Dr. Goetsch is a retired college Vice-President and professor of business and political science, a business consultant, and a widely-recognized public speaker. He is the author of more than 70 books on leadership, management, business, and political commentary.